“With the facility built, the new power plant will provide additional benefits to all taxpayers during 60 years of its operation as it would pay big amounts of dividends to the budget – experts estimate that approximately 30 billion litas would be paid to the state budget as dividends of Visaginas Nuclear Power Plant (VAE) over 60 years of its operation, based on current prices,” Udrėnas said in an interview to Žinių Radijas on Tuesday.
Lithuania’s share in 17-billion-litas-worth investments in the facility would total some 5-6 billion litas and those funds would not be taken from the state budget, he said. Some of the required funds would be borrowed by the VAE, which would own approximately 34 percent of shares in the company managing the facility, Udrėnas added.
Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius said last week that the new VAE would operate profitably from the very start. “As early as in the first year of operation, the Visaginas nuclear power plant could sell its electricity at a profit and that profit would go back to taxpayers in the form of dividends,” he said.
The construction of the new nuclear power plant is expected to bring around 962 million litas in extra tax revenue to Lithuania by 2020 and the implementation of the project is expected to contribute 34.7 billion litas to the country’s GDP between 2011 and 2050.
As estimated, the new plant's electricity production cost during its entire lifetime of 60 years should be 0.07-0.10 litas per kilowatt-hour, not including another 0.10-0.15 litas in loan costs. The loans are planned to be paid back over 18 years. Thus, it is estimated that the price of electricity generated at the new facility would amount to 0.17-0.25 litas until 2040.
Lithuania expects to build the new facility by 2020-2022 together with Japan's Hitachi as the strategic investor and Latvian and Estonian energy companies. The new plant is estimated to cost up to 5 billion euros to build, with Japanese, US and European banks expected to provide some 50-70 percent of the financing.
Lithuania should own 34 percent of shares in a new company that will operate the plant and invest nearly 6 billion litas.
